officials at the labor department say hurricane sandy did not substantially impact their estimates. some analysts expected the job situation to improve but can't predict how bad the fiscal cliff will affect economic growth. here is dean maki at barclays capital. >> we had 146,000 jobs created. that are pretty much in line with the last two months and right in line with where we think the trend is right now. president obama's re-election clearly reduced one set of uncertainties which was who's going to win the election. we now know that he did win, but it hasn't reduced the uncertainty surrounding the fiscal cliff and what's going to happen there. if the full fiscal cliff were to occur, we'd expect a much worse outcome. probably a contraction in the 1% to 2% range in the first half of 2013. this is a very important issue. the economy was performing reasonably well in the months leading up to the potential fiscal cliff. we saw that in the job numbers for november. we've also seen it in the gdp numbers for the third quarter which rose 2.7% annualized. that doesn't ensure us against a d